Barely anything sold by L.L. Bean (“Freeport, ME”) is made in Maine – perhaps but two product lines, boots and bags.
I have been wearing the L.L. Bean duckboot (né Bean Boot), indeed made in Maine, for 20-odd years. The advantages are many – waterproof, comfortable year-round, reasonably handsome in a received New England style. One has great confidence walking over and through basically anything in foul weather when shod in these duckboots.
The core disadvantage is they fall apart after a few years due to a design flaw that L.L. Bean refuses to acknowledge.
As I explained to CEO Steve Smith (no relation):
My old duckboots fell apart. The previous return policy applied to them. I mailed them back to the Canadian-returns address for a replacement. I included a letter pointing out that I didn’t want a lecture. Much later, I was instructed by E‑mail to call a certain number, at which point an old lady, audibly wizened at having to say no to people all day every day, lectured me that L.L. Bean does not have anything resembling a lifetime guarantee.
As L.L. Bean does, she kept using the word “resoling” and kept trying to upsell me on that service, which costs 35 bucks and takes forever. Resoling would apparently have repaired my boots, which you’d think would be the very first thing she’d have told me. I had already shelled out the money for a new pair of duckboots. L.L. Bean was already up on the transaction, all told.
At no point, even after I asked her to do so, did the old lady offer to waive the $35 fee for resoling. To say the same thing once more, yes, I got a lecture.
Now, then: “resoling.” (Or re-soling.) We all know what the sole of a shoe is, but really we are conceiving of the welt and everything it surrounds. What L.L. Bean considers a sole (YouTube video) is everything below the brown leather upper. (L.L. Bean has offered a few much nicer colourways over the centuries, including forest green, but only in ladies’ sizes.) When resoling was offered, all I could think of was “I don’t need new soles.”
Indeed, what is the defect?
Walk through the door into your Martha Stewart–compliant mudroom, or your vestibule with cleverly deployed car mats as boot mats. Unlace your duckboots. Stand back up. Use left inner foot to pull off right shoe. But now your right foot is clad only in a sock. You don’t want to get it wet by pressing against the inboard edge of the sodden left shoe.
So, naturally, you use your right big toe to spear the heel of the shoe as you remove your left foot. (“Heel” means the calcaneus or heel bone, not the rearmost pad of the sole of your foot.) As such you have inflicted a point load on the heel of one boot.
Over time, the stitching holding the upper to what L.L. Bean calls the sole will fray and detach at exactly that loaded point. I’ve got three of those – a kind of failed memento.
Then your boots aren’t waterproof anymore, as you will learn one rainy day as you “confidently” ford a puddle.
L.L. Bean’s lifetime guarantee was routinely abused – so much so there was an entire segment on This American Life about that chicanery. Its present-day guarantee excludes damage from animals (“pet damage”) – a direct consequence of my having long ago returned, and gotten a replacement for, duckboots that “would not survive dog attack.”
I put a lot of effort into trying to get L.L. Bean to listen to my contention that there may be a design flaw in their storied duckboots. There is, but they wouldn’t listen. The company did comp me 80 bucks American, which fact I proceeded to forget when I complained yet again. One’s hands are not entirely clean.
But I’m not the one with the faulty product.
The fix is simple but somewhat expensive: Stich a panel of carbon fibre all the way across and through the full height of the heel, anchored well into the sole and at the rim. The boots’ rubber will duly deform upon point load, but not so much it will eventually break the stitching, which also needs to be beefed up.
I use carbon fibre insoles, for heaven’s sake. Surely this is doable.
In the last half-year, I went through three attempts to replace my duckboots. (They are now colossally expensive.) L.L. Bean warns that one should order a full size smaller than usual, but my regular Size 11 had always been just right. Yet my feet were aswim in a new Size 11.
I went back to my damaged old pair, returned the 11s to the downtown store, and ordered not just a 10 but a 10½. Indeed only the former fit properly. Thus, in this replacement process, I went through two pairs I had to return. They were in pristine and re-saleable condition, but this bespeaks further deficiencies in design.
In a previous century, I fell for the failed analogue that L.L. Bean also sells – a Chinese-made “duckboot” that is so stiff as to be noticeably uncomfortable at all times. Not significantly cheaper and a raw deal overall.
Putting these things on always requires sitting down and using a shoehorn. But all three of the new pairs had or have tongues that catch on the sock over one’s arch and double back on themselves. That had never happened before.
Of course no variant of duckboot (singular or plural, one word or two) produces a search hit on their Web site, even after I advised them of that error. At least they aren’t “typesetting” the Web site of a billion-dollar empire in Arial... anymore.
A provided coupon code did not work even when reproduced exactly (including the space characters we were warned against using). I had to pre-clear the following sequence with Customer Service: Pay full price, submit order number and coupon code, have refund applied. This too is retarded.
Every single E‑mail I received had the subject line L.L.Bean Executive Office (sic), even when directly responding to, and top-posting, a message with a real subject line.
The company’s HTML E‑mails misrender phone numbers such that they cannot be clicked or tapped and actually dialled.
Long ago, I bought some made-in-Maine true winter boots (extending well above the ankle). I barely ever needed them, they were as cold as moccasins, and, after years in a closet, they dried out and developed a crack, which defect I discovered only when I was digging them out for donation.
We really are dumber than ever. It’s as though L.L. Bean were using Somalis to design their duckboots, manage their return processes, frustrate lifelong customers, and diagnose design flaws.
The duckboots aren’t retarded. L.L. Bean is.
Of course I’ll buy another pair. Make them in forest green in Size 11 and I’ll buy them right now.
Posted: 2026.01.24